October 2009

For now, at least, Israel is putting justice and its own survival ahead of the practical considerations it will have to deal with when the U.S. threatens to reduce aid should Israel continue to not back our homicidal and suicidal machinations in Southeast Europe.

JERUSALEM, Oct 27 (Tanjug) - Israel remains firm in its stand of refusing to support the unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo and Metohija, it was confirmed Tuesday at a meeting between Israeli and Serbian Interior Ministers Eliyahu Yishai and Ivica Dacic.

Pointing to the high level of mutual political understanding, Dacic said he thanked Israel for its principled stand on Kosovo and Metohija.

Israeli officials have confirmed that Israel will remain firm in its stand, he told Tanjug.

During Dacic’s visit to Israel, an agreement was signed between the two governments on cooperation in the fight against crime, illegal trade and abuse of narcotics and psychoactive substances, terrorism and other serious criminal acts.

The Serbian delegation also conferred with Israeli Police Commissioner Dudi Cohen and Minister of Public Security Yitzhak Aharonovitch.

The delegation also visited the Israeli police which is carrying out difficult tasks, Dacic said.

Israeli and Serbian police forces have stood the test of time over the years and have great experience in fighting terrorism, he said.

Patriarch Theophilos of Jerusalem also expressed support at the meeting with Dacic to Serbia’s just endeavors to preserve its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The meeting with Patriarch Theophilos was the last on the program of the Serbian delegation’s two-day visit to Israel.

…In two pieces penned for the newspaper Infopress…[Xharra] and RTK…are severely criticised for a recent debate on press freedom.

In one piece, Ramiz Sala equates “Jeta Xharra and BIRN” to the UDB, the Serbian secret service.

In another article, Ilir Gashi writes: “RTK, with its [show] Jeta në Kosovë, truly is the biggest after-war offence done to this territory.”

The show, which sparked controversy last Thursday, discussed how government advertising is used to influence the media landscape and recent dismissals of journalists who inconvenienced the authorities.

It featured a video report in which the BIRN Kosovo news team was expelled from the Office for Public Information of the municipality of Skenderaj in the central Kosovo Drenica region, and forced to leave town by an armed man who confiscated their footage.

Infopress newspaper, which receives the lion’s share of government advertising revenues, has led the campaign with a series of inflammatory articles on Xharra and the programme, claiming they had set out to denigrate the Drenica region. Threatening emails followed, including death threats, and the newspaper itself published openly abusive and threatening letters from readers.

Non-governmental organisations have raised concerns about freedom of speech in Kosovo in an open letter in response to a campaign against Jeta Xharra. In the open letter, released on June 4, nine NGOs and dozens of individuals expressed concern over the intensifying campaign against Xharra.

Regarding the attacks on Xharra, the NGOs wrote: “The increasingly common practice of Infopress asserting that particular individuals are ‘Serb spies’ is becoming a disturbing issue.”

The international community’s top envoy in Kosovo, Pieter Feith, and the EU’s External Relations Committee office in Pristina, RELEX Kosovo, have defended the show and press freedom in recent days.

Kosovar journalist Jeta Xharra is a spy for Belgrade, if one is to believe a campaign waged by pro-government press over the past week targeting the “Life in Kosovo” program, which she hosts on public television and which dares to address controversial and even taboo topics.

Xharra is the director of BIRN Kosovo, which produces “Life in Kosovo,” aired weekly on public broadcaster RTK. Screaming front-page headlines on the Infopress tabloid newspaper reached a climax in recent days, stating “Jeta Xharra is an Agent of the Serbian Secret Police,” and calling for the programme to be taken off the air.

“This is an explosive allegation in a society still traumatized by Serbian oppression and wartime atrocities, and is a clear incitement to acts of violence against our Kosovo staff,” said Xharra. [The girl still believes her people’s lies about the war.]
…
Xharra said: “We have nothing against Drenica. These are vicious and manipulative smears. On the contrary, our show has on several occasions dealt with the negligence of officials, which contributes to Drenica’s/Skenderaj continuous poverty”

Given Infopress’ closeness to the government, she added: “I would like to see the government explicitly distance itself from these disgraceful attacks. We need to be reassured that this is neither part of a wider campaign to put the public broadcaster under state control nor to silence an incisive and impartial source of information ahead of local elections scheduled for this autumn.”

“Life in Kosovo” is a very popular show, despite the death threats, spy allegations and negative press. It touches on taboo topics ranging from homosexuality to corruption of public officials and is Kosovo’s most-watched current affairs program.

A few days ago, I posted that the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo in June compared Thaci’s government to the old communist regime, adding that the government’s interference in freedom of speech is risking democracy. Today we have an update along those lines, from Deutsche Presse Agenteur:

The European Broadcasting Union on Monday slammed Hashim Thaci, the prime minister of Kosovo, accusing him of turning the public service broadcaster into a “media arm of the ruling party.”

“Pressure from your government transformed [public broadcaster] RTK from being a balanced supplier of news into a media arm of the ruling party and of yourself as prime minister. Critical or alternative voices have been suppressed.”

PRISTINA, Kosovo — The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) on Monday (October 26th) accused Prime Minister Hashim Thaci of turning Kosovo’s Public Broadcaster, the RTK, into a “media arm of the ruling party”. EBU head Jean Reveillon sent a letter to Thaci saying that the RTK faces political and economic interference from the government.

“What we are now seeing is pressure from the Kosovo government to turn RTK into an uncritical state broadcaster — a fact that will be beneficial neither to the citizens of Kosovo nor to your ambitions for more international recognition of your country,” Reveillon wrote. His letter went on to say that since Kosovo declared independence in February 2008, interference has grown and led to the resignation of RTK’s general director in September. The EBU represents 125 national broadcasters and promotes public service media in Europe and around the world. (Kosova Sot, Koha Ditore, Express, Lajm, Epoka e Re - 27/10/09)

Ironically and farcically, last night a commercial campaign to improve Kosovo’s image (and to get you to invest and travel there) was kicked off by Kosovo, which last year dubbed itself “NEWBORN.” The commercial is airing on CNN, BBC, Bloomberg, and Euronews. All of which can now also proudly call themselves extensions of the Thaci government, that is, of the KLA — as the U.S. government has been for the past decade.

The slogan is “Kosovo: The Young Europeans.” And young they’ll stay, as STILLBORNS tend to do.

Just to recap from the previous post, RTK came into the spotlight in June, when an Albanian reporter looking into KLA crimes was tarred as — what else? — a Serbian spy:

…[Journalist Jeta] Xharra is the host of a popular current affairs program, “Life in Kosovo”, produced by BIRN [Balkan Investigative Reporting Network] and aired weekly by public broadcaster RTK.

The show has frequently come under attack for its investigation of issues such as alleged atrocities committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, among other issues. In the past days, Xharra has been the victim of an intensifying campaign due to the 31 May airing of a programme looking into freedom of speech in Kosovo. The Infopress tabloid newspaper, beholden to the government for advertising revenues, has labeled her a “spy for Serbia” and published threatening letters from readers. […]

To shut all the distraught Albanians up, the KLA rulers of Kosovo are going to have to do what they laughably convinced the world that Milosevic was trying to do: get rid of every last one of them.

BIRN [Balkan Investigative Reporting Network] team investigated concerns about freedom of the press in Kosovo and discovered the media’s critical voice is being jeopardised by conflicts of interests, political and business interference and the psychological power of Omerta.

Television Journalist Jeton Llapashtica claims to have lost his job because of the questions he asked. Not because his line of inquiry was irrelevant, or his delivery poor, but because he directed “very tough questions” at Kosovo’s government spokesperson, Memli Krasniqi.

During his interview with Krasniqi, Llapashtica asked the Government’s spokesperson to comment on Kosovar rock band Troja and their song Clown’s testament, in which the political apparatus in Kosovo is criticised as an organized team which is stealing land.
…
Llapashtica said he was told: “You shouldn’t have asked him that question because you provoked him very much. We shouldn’t taunt the government people. They give us advertisements.”

…[Besa TV director Muhamer Fusha] added that “being critical, and a local TV station, is not in the best interest of local TV station”. He said it was [for] the national media to tackle the bigger issues.

While compiling a report in Skenderaj Municipality, which is led by the PDK, Kosovo Democratic Party, a BIRN team was attacked and impeded from filming. Journalist for Jeta në Kosovë Jeta Abazi was trying to report on failures by the mayor.
…
According to Glauk Konjufca, from the Vetevendosje! Movement, there is no freedom of expression in Kosovo. “There is an entire mechanism of small scale blackmails, threats, phone calls and pressure threatening the freedom of speech either on behalf of the government or the institutions”.
…
And, according to the US Department of State in 2008: “Journalists in Kosovo are intimidated by the government officials, public service workers, as well as by businesses…” […]

Ah, so yet again Albanians are discovering what it feels like to be Serbian in Kosovo. As for “the psychological power of Omerta,” please note that the pressured TV station is, after all, named Besa. That’s Albanian for Omerta.

Sarajevo, 20 Jan. (AKI) - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the senior Al-Qaeda official credited with masterminding the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States, was granted Bosnian citizenship before the attacks, a local newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Born in Kuwait to a family originally from the Baluchi region of Pakistan, Mohammed reportedly went to Bosnia in September 1995, disguised as a humanitarian worker for an organisation called Egyptian Relief.

He obtained Bosnian citizenship in November the same year, Bosnian daily Fokus said, quoting local intelligence sources.

The newspaper said Egyptian Relief was just a cover for the Cairo-based Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Fokus said war-time authorities knew about Mohammed’s presence in Bosnia and his citizenship was kept a state secret.

Thousands of mujahadeen from Islamic countries came to Bosnia in the early 1990s to fight with local Muslims and many remained in the country after the war, acquiring Bosnian citizenship.

The paper did not specify Mohammed’s movements after Bosnia. But he was arrested in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi in March 2003 and transferred to the American detention camp for suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The 9/11 Commission Report cited him as “the principal architect of 9/11 attacks” in which over 3,000 people were killed in the United States. […]

So the biggest, latest Jews news is the Goldstone Report, which accuses Israel of war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity in the December-January Gaza defensive. It “found” that Israel “punished and terrorised” civilians, failing to take precautions to minimize loss of life. The 575-page document also “cited strong evidence Israeli forces committed ‘grave breaches’ of the Geneva Convention.” The investigation by UN Human Rights Council investigator Richard Goldstone concluded that the “UN Security Council should refer Israel — if it fails to probe crimes properly — to the International Criminal Court” within six months.

Every Jewish outlet in the world is on the ball in counter-attacking the report by Goldstone. But if they had been on the ball in the 1990s, they wouldn’t have to be dealing with the name Goldstone today.

Isn’t it something the way the samenames that helped dismantle Yugoslavia and Serbia seem to be resurfacing to dismantle Israel? All the names that fingered Serbia as it dealt with terror are giving Israel the same trouble. They and their credibility and careers could have been demolished, these people stopped in their tracks, if anyone gave a damn about Western machinations in the Balkans. Instead they’re coming back to haunt more than just the Serbs.

My Jews, if only that famous give-a-shit radar of yours made it to the Balkans, and found it worthwhile to check out what was actually going down in Bosnia in the 90s, then the name Goldstone might have started and ended in the Balkans, discredited and disgraced before it could do damage elsewhere — this time to Jews.

What is Goldstone’s connection to Bosnia? Well, it took a different kind of Jew to care to dig that up, to bother to look at Balkan precedents and their implications for Israel. It takes an Israeli, and an Israeli news organization or two. Here it is, from Arutz Sheva (Israel National News):

(IsraelNN.com) Judge Richard Goldstone, whose recent United Nations Human Rights Council investigation purported to find evidence of Israeli war crimes in Gaza, once indicted a fictional Serbian character and a dead man for war crimes as well. As in Gaza, those indictments were also allegedly based on “eyewitness testimony.”

Goldstone headed the Office of the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), established by the United Nations in 1993. In 1995, one year into his term as chief ICTY prosecutor, Goldstone presented an indictment of several Serbs for war crimes and crimes against humanity. As brought to light in the weekend edition of the Hebrew-language Makor Rishon newspaper, among those indicted was a man identified as “Gruban”.

Gruban, later identified more fully as Gruban from Bijelo Polje, was charged with viciously raping Muslim prisoners in what was identified by the prosecution as essentially a Serbian concentration camp. His crimes were given weight by an anonymous individual identified only as “Witness F”, who claimed to have suffered at the hands of the notorious war criminal.

As described by Makor Rishon, “Within just a few months, the black silhouette of ‘Gruban’ was plastered on a poster of the most wanted war criminals in Bosnia.” At the time, Makor Rishon noted, the American newspaper The Boston Globe published an article wondering why the poster of “Gruban” stated that his description, father’s name, location and age were all listed as “unknown”.

The problem for NATO forces in tracking down the serial rapist was that Gruban from Bijelo Polje, also known as Gruban Malic, is a fictional character from Hero on a Donkey, a famous Serbian novel about World War II by Miodrag Bulatovic.

The Gruban hoax was the result of a conversation in a Bosnian cafe between Yugoslavian war correspondent Nebojsa Jevric and an American journalist desperate to see a “real war criminal”, according to Makor Rishon. Jevric identified “Gruban Malic” by name as the Serbian people’s “worst war criminal”, having committed the most rapes.

After the indictment of “Gruban” became known, Jevric capitalized on his countrymen’s bemused fascination with Goldstone’s “investigation” and wrote a book called Hero on a Donkey Goes to The Hague. In the book he detailed how his comment to an American reporter took on a life of its own.

In 1998, even after the true identity of the “war criminal” was known, the charges against “Gruban Malic” were officially dropped for lack of evidence by Goldstone’s successor. Thirteen other flesh-and-blood Serbs were also taken off the same ICTY indictment docket alongside “Gruban” - including a man that Goldstone indicted several years after he had already died.

So what we have is a UN investigator who specializes in indicting fictional characters for fictional crimes.

The Arutz Sheva piece above touches on the Balkans “eyewitness testimony” farces that made their way unquestioned into Western media, helping to propagandize the public and thereby allowing the West’s bellicose policies to continue. Goldstone was guilty of being duped then, and he’s guilty of it now. The modus operandi remains the same as well — including ignoring the use by Muslims (Bosniaks and Palestinians) of civilian areas to maximize casualties — as can be seen in an analysis by Jerusalem’s Institute for Contemporary Affairs, titled Blocking the Truth of the Gaza War: How the Goldstone Commission Understated the Hamas Threat to Palestinian Civilians.

NGO Monitor has more on the flaws of the Goldstone report, which should again sound very familiar to any Balkans-watcher. Note particularly the “false and unsubstantiated allegations” that were dutifully copied by the Goldstone commission:

1. The 575-page Goldstone report is primarily based on NGO statements, publications, and submissions (70 references each for B’Tselem and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, and more than 30 for Al-Haq and Human Rights Watch). In its analysis of NGO submissions and testimony, NGO Monitor found numerous false and unsubstantiated allegations. Nevertheless, the Goldstone committee simply copied the NGO biases, flawed methodology, and false claims, rendering the entire report invalid.

2. Goldstone’s press conference in New York and the report’s recommendations constitute another step in the Durban Strategy, crystallized at the 2001 NGO Forum, using the language of human rights and international law as weapons in the political war to isolate and demonize Israel, and restrict legitimate responses to terror. […]

Again, see Yugoslavia.

So instead of making quick work of this Goldstone character over a decade ago, the world allowed him to fester and mutate, so that now, thanks to his report on Gaza:

(Update: Palestinian diplomats in Geneva say they have gathered enough support to call a special debate in the U.N. Human Rights Council on alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza earlier this year…)

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon supports Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ attempt to reopen debate at the U.N. Human Rights Council on a report accusing Israel of war crimes, his spokeswoman said Monday.

Abbas wants the Geneva-based body to hold a “special session” on the so-called Goldstone report, whose recommendations could pave the way for Israel’s referral to the International Criminal Court over its military offensive against Hamas in Gaza last winter.
…
Ban’s spokeswoman, Michele Montas, said Monday that the secretary-general had spoken to Abbas by phone Sunday, and had voiced support for the P.A. proposal to reopen the matter at the HRC.
…
Apart from the P.A. effort in Geneva, Abbas is also supporting a separate initiative by Libya to have the U.N. Security Council discuss the Goldstone report…

The resolution that was the end-game of the session called for above has already happened, and here is the upshot so far:

“This draft resolution saddens me as it includes only allegations against Israel…There is not a single phrase condemning Hamas as we have done in the report. I hope that the council can modify the text.”

So said none other than Judge Richard Goldstone himself to the Swiss Le Temps newspaper on Friday before the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution (without modifying the text) endorsing the Goldstone Report, clearing the way for discussion in the UN Security Council.

The resolution also condemned Israeli activity in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank even though these were not part of the Goldstone remit.

Was Goldstone so naive as to think that his report would not be turned into a political and legal weapon to use against Israel by the UNHRC? …

…Indeed, why is it that the media and now the Goldstone Commission are prepared to take the claims of terrorist groups and their supporters at face value, yet question the reliability or even the honesty of Israel?

…In addition to his disappointment with the UNHRC resolution, [Goldstone’s] report’s credibility was further undermined in an interview he gave to The Forward, where he stated: “If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven. I wouldn’t consider it in any way embarrassing if many of the allegations turn out to be disproved.”

…Throughout his career, Goldstone has been accused of cutting corners because of ambition, and critics say his Gaza commission has set a new low. That a Jewish judge, barred from entering Israel for accepting a commission biased against the state, should write a report based largely on interviews with Hamas which panders to anti-Zionist (even anti-Semitic) opinion seems unbeatable.

So again, we’ve got an “ambitious” judge “accused of cutting corners” — who, it goes unsaid, made his career in much the same way as he is doing now, only it was on the backs of Serbs, who were his target practice for the Jews. And yet none of these organizations finds it relevant to bring up the 1990s Balkans as a direct parallel modus operandi for this person even as they sweat to properly discredit him.

The report above quotes the Washington Times:

…The incidental, unintentional civilian deaths Israel caused during the Gaza conflict are condemned as war crimes; the widespread and intentional Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians are basically ignored. The Goldstone model makes it impossible for civilized states to strike effectively against the world’s barbarians who are fighting a shadow war against decency that views innocent noncombatants as both legitimate targets and useful shields.

Again, see Yugoslavia. At the Hague, we even had a prosecution witness boast that in the Kosovo war he wasn’t assigned to document Serbian suffering, only Albanian suffering. And guess what we’ve got today, from Honest Reporting:

…The mandate (HRC Resolution S-9/1) for the fact-finding mission was “to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression” — already determining that Israel had committed “violations of international human rights law ” before the investigation even began.

As Melanie Phillips notes: “So this ‘objective’ inquiry had been told before it was even established that the guilty party in Gaza was Israel, designated by the UN as the ‘occupying power’; that it was guilty of ‘aggression’ and ‘violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law’; and that the Palestinians of Gaza were the victims of this Israeli aggression.”

Here we have Goldstone himself referencing Serbia — casually revealing that he and his Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia were looking exclusively for war crimes by Serbs (and so it stayed for the ICTY’s first decade):

…These crimes were so great, he explained, they went beyond their direct victims or the countries in which they were perpetrated, to harm humanity as a whole. This definition, he said, meant that perpetrators were to be prosecuted anywhere, by any country.

This rational[e], he went on to say, constituted the basis for the concept of universal jurisdiction, which is being applied by some countries where Israel Defense Forces officers are charged for alleged violations during their command in the West Bank and Gaza.
…The international tribunals that judged Serbian war criminals for their actions in Bosnia, and the establishment of tribunals to review the actions of perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide - in which South Africa-born Goldstone served as chief prosecutor - also relied on lessons drawn from the Holocaust, he said at the [jurists’] lecture [in Israel last month].

He noted that no similar courts were set up to look into the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia in the ’70s or Saddam Hussein’s acts against Iraqi Kurds.

The first time such tribunals were set up were for Bosnia, Goldstone said, because this was the first time after the Holocaust that such occurrences happened in “Europe’s backyard.” The war in Bosnia led to the formation of tribunals on crimes against humanity, he said, because European men with “blue eyes and light skin” again carried out actions similar to those observed in the Holocaust.

Israel, he added, was one of the first countries to support the formation of permanent court of law for crimes against humanity - a proposal that came up following the successful performance of the special tribunals on Bosnia.

However, that changed, he said, after Egypt insisted at the Rome conference that the mandate of this permanent court include occupied territories. This prompted Israel to join the six other countries that voted against the formation of the International Court of Justice, including the United States, China and Libya.

Are we seeing how sick this is? That Israel would support an international court to begin with underscores that Jewish stupidity runs as deep in Israel as it does in the Diaspora. Who else but Israel and America would the architects of such a court ultimately have in their sights? That Israel would deem the court “successful” in judging only one side’s purported misdeeds in Bosnia is an abomination against the Jews’ own history, where they were in the same shoes with the Serbs in 1930s-40s Europe as the Serbs again found themselves in, in 1991. For all the talk of Israel’s right to self-defense, why should Serbs deserve any less of the same right?

Please also note a predictable insidiousness in all this. Recall that in 1999 when the Western world bombed Serbia on behalf of Muslims claiming repression, oppression, ethnic cleansing and genocide in Kosovo, a Saudi prince registered his approval and called on the U.S. and NATO to extend their “honorable actions” in Kosovo to Palestine. When an Italian ambassador illuminated the implications of the Yugoslavia bombing to then Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon, Sharon called on American Jewish organizations — who had supported the collective aggression on Serbia — to lobby for an end to the bombardmaent. And now, just as Serbia was hauled into an international tribunal and an entire nation put on trial, we see the same prescription being laid out for Israel in Goldstone’s report — then taken to the next level by the Arab and Muslim states that control the UN.

Now let’s take apart the shockingly sophomoric and superficial notion that: “The war in Bosnia led to the formation of tribunals on crimes against humanity, he said, because European men with ‘blue eyes and light skin’ again carried out actions similar to those observed in the Holocaust.”

Holy. Crap. Here we have nothing less than an admission that the world is in the business of prosecuting the more “white”-featured side in a given conflict. Goldstone apparently missed the fact that the designated victims in Bosnia were at least as light-haired and blue-eyed. Or has he never seen a photograph of Bosnian Muslim fundamentalist wartime president Alija Izetbegovic?

This kind of “thinking” is how we get into the business of supporting Hitler’s recruiters over their victims who now fight back — which is exactly what the Bosnian president had been in his younger days, an SS recruiter. Nonetheless, the politically correct villain was chosen (the “white” Serb) and given the black hats to wear — and the equally politically correct victims were chosen (the “brown” Muslims), and given the white hats. Even if the Bosnians were as white as the Serbs, their religion had “brown” origins. The newsflash for Goldstone and the many who “think” as he does is that one of the more subconscious reasons that the world sympathizes with Palestinians over Israelis is that most of the lighter skin and blue eyes in the region are found in Israel.

Below is an abridged piece from an Israeli blog “The View from Here”, outlining how the UN is applying the very kind of legal system that the Nazis applied, and the public is going for it. All the examples the writer uses to support his argument also apply in the case of the Serbs. The UN is as anti-Israel as it has been anti-Serb, and that’s what should have given Jews some clues. Anti-Serb. Anti-Israel. Anti-Western. As I keep repeating, when the West attacked Serbia in favor of at least four varieties of savages, it attacked itself.

It is becoming common practise for nation states and non-nation actors to apply legal means to achieve political results.

Known as ‘lawfare’ these methods have been increasingly applied against Israel. They are being used as yet another weapon in their armoury to eliminate the Jewish state. [As they were to eliminate the Serbs as a nation.]

As such, their roots reach back to wartime Germany. Their ultimate application is eerily similar to that created by the Nazis. Back in the dark days of European history Nazi Germany operated a legal system that gave legitimacy to the machinations of the Third Reich.

The raison d-etre for the Nazi anti-Semitic programs were to remove a stain to world peace, namely the Jews, and to create a new world order. [As was done in the 1990s to that other stain to peace, the Serbs.] When Hitler condemned the Jews for all of the world’s woes German jurisprudence rubber stamped the measures demanded by its leaders.

The Jews, they claimed, were guilty of the most heinous crimes against humanity and laws were established to deal with these Jewish criminals. [See Serbs, 1990s.]

It became legal to deprive Jews of work, to make them wear the Yellow Star, to herd them into Ghettos, to deprive them of their property, to transport them to the death camps, and to execute them.

This was all performed under a veneer of a legal respectability, that everyone involved in this genocide was obeying his duty in law and, therefore, upholding the legal rulings that applied in the territories controlled by Germany. [See Balkans, present day.]

Records were kept at each stage of the deligitimisation and extermination of the Jews. These records showed that the law was being enforced. The book-keeping was part of the legal system that proved, in Nazi eyes, that everything was being done in a legally-acceptable and systematically transparent manner. German courts upheld the fragmentation of Jewish society and its elimination as required by Nazi law. [See Balkans, present day.]

Few dared question whether the Jews were truly guilty as charged. The law, and the resultant punishment, took its course - and the rest is history. [See 1990s to today, Balkans.]

At various stages of the ‘legal’ genocide of the Jews, whether in the Ghettos or the concentration camps, the Germans employed Jews to enforce their actions. [See NatasaKandic and all Serbs employed by anti-Serbian NGOs.]

The horrors of the Holocaust should have buried the notion that Jews are the enemy of the world and are easy prey to fanatics and their supporters. Sadly, the old hatred was merely dormant. It has re-awoken in a different form and has found itself coalescing under the auspices of the United Nations.
…
The United Nations is enacting a Nazi-style legal system.

Massacres and genocides by brutal dictators have largely been ignored. Only the Jewish state has had laws and rulings applied against it that do not apply to other members. [See Serbia and Bosnia’s Serb Republic.]

These rulings were not made in order to have Israel reform itself to the fictitious demands and, therefore, feel at ease among the league of nations. They are biasly enacted to turn Israel into the Jewish pariah among the nations. [See pariah, can-do-no-right Serbia.]

The United Nations Human Rights Council, hatched in a Wannsee-type conference in Geneva this year by malevolent instigators, shrewdly selected a naive jurist to be their Jewish Kappo.

Richard Goldstone thought he had been elected to uphold the law. In his academic simplicity he assumed that he would apply universal jurisprudence. Instead, he became a prisoner to the imposition of Nazi-style justice.
…
The parties who are truly guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the very ones who are creating the lawfare against the Jewish state, get a free pass. [See Croatia, Bosnia and Albanian Kosovo.]

The United Nations has become a chamber akin to the Third Reich.

…The ones perpetrating the campaign against the Jewish state are, as with the Third Reich in the 30’s and 40s, those guilty of the worst crimes today. They include Libya, the Hamas-led Palestinian protest, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, China, Egypt, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan. [And Bosnia, Croatia and Greater Albania.]

…Just as there were those who gave lip service to the thought that Jews were capable of the crimes imposed on them by the Nazi laws so today some assume that Israel deliberately targeted and massacred innocent people in Gaza.

The inversion of Nazi-type justice imposed on the Jewish state while defrauding Israel by portraying it as a Nazi-type regime is meant to isolate, deligitimise, and eventually eradicate the Jewish state.

…The report is not an end in itself just as the Nazi judgments were not an end in itself but plainly the beginning of the end for European Jewry. […]

On the last point that those guilty of the worst crimes are those who lead the campaign against the Jewish state — that is, accusing Jews of the crimes being perpetrated against them, here is a relevant passage on the ways of the propagandist, from a book titled Propaganda, by Jacques Ellul:

Propaganda of agitation succeeds each time it designates someone as the source of all misery, provided that he is not too powerful…The propagandist will not accuse his enemy of just any misdeed; he will accuse him of the very intention that he himself has, and trying to commit the very crime that he himself is about to commit.”

I’ll finish with part of a statement given at the UN by British Col. Richard Kemp, on behalf of UN Watch:

I am the former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan. I served with NATO and the United Nations; commanded troops in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Macedonia; and participated in the Gulf War. I spent considerable time in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, and worked on international terrorism for the UK Government’s Joint Intelligence Committee.

Mr. President, based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population. [As did Serbia, which he should know if he commanded NATO troops in Bosnia.]

The IDF faces a challenge that we British do not have to face to the same extent. It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights. [Same goes for Serbia.]

The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy’s hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks. [Serbia likewise allowed and facilitated humanitarian aid to the enemy.]

Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes…More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas’ way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians.

This item is from earlier in the year, but it’s significant — not only because the Bosniaks are getting just a small taste of their own medicine — except more accurately so — but also because Croatians in their blind Serb-hatred did all this to themselves when Bosnian Croats made a deal with the Islamic devil and voted along with Muslims for Bosnia to secede — leaving themselves at the mercy of a Muslim-dominated state.

A Bosnian Croat nongovernmental organization (NGO) said on Sunday that it has filed war crimes suits against Bosniak (Muslim) political and military leaders, including the incumbent Bosniak member of the Bosnian collective presidency Haris Silajdzic.

Croatia Libertas, an NGO based at Mostar in southern Bosnia, said in a statement that it has filed charges with the Bosnia- Herzegovina Prosecutor’s Office and the Mostar Cantonal Prosecutor ’s Office against Bosniak political and military leaders accusing them of war crimes against 375 Croat inmates of detention camps during 1991-1995, Xinhua reported.

“We have evidence that 331 concentration camps existed, set up by the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina, exclusively for non-Bosniaks ( non-Muslims). Based on new testimonies and new material evidence, we have also submitted an earlier complaint which we expect to at long last enter an investigative phase,” it said.

The NGO said it regretted that measures had not been taken to penalize crimes against Croats in Bosnia.

During the Bosnian war from April 1992 to December 1995, Silajdzic served successively as the foreign minister and the prime minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina. He was perceived as the most visible advocate for self-defense and military assistance to Bosnia, insisting Bosnia faced foreign aggression.

Bosnian Muslims, which account for 43.5 percent of 3.8 million population in Bosnia, are the largest ethnic group in the country but felt vulnerable in the war as the other two ethnic groups Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats could count on their neighboring mother countries Serbia and Croatia.

Criminal charges were also filed against the wartime commander and Bosnia’s incumbent Defense Minister, Selmo Cikotic, head of the Muslim community Mustafa efendi Ceric, war time commander of the Bosnian Army Main Staff Sefer Halilovic and other wartime officials as well as a number of foreign nationals who came to Bosnia from several Arab and Asian countries.

The charges were filed based on documents and testimonies published in the book “Muslim prison camps for Croats in 1991-1995 in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” by Ivica Mlivoncic. The book was launched recently in Mostar.
Croatia Libertas said it would forward the charges to the UN Human Rights Department to point to judiciary problems in Bosnia.

Croatia will testify before the International Court of Justice on behalf of Kosovo in December, a move daily Novi List believes will sour relations with Serbia.

The Rijeka-based daily adds that Croatia’s appearance before ICJ will not be taken lightly by Belgrade, and that Zagreb is steeling itself for a negative reaction.

Croatia, which will be the only country of the former Yugoslavia to take part in the debate, will not say anything new, says the daily. Rather, it will simply repeat its reasons for choosing to recognize Kosovo’s unilateral independence declaration in March 2008, as outlined at the time by President Stjepan Mesić and then Prime Minister Ivo Sanader.

The ICJ has been asked to gives its advisory opinion on the legality of Kosovo Albanians’ unilateral independence, as to whether it is in accordance with international law. However, the court’s opinion cannot oblige any country to revoke its recognition of Kosovo independence.

The case is due to be heard between December 1-11, when 29 countries will give testimony on the Kosovo situation, including countries that have recognized Kosovo’s independence and those that have not and have no intention of doing so.

Given that Croatia also seceded illegally, it has to cover its backside by trying to make a case for Kosovo’s illegal secession. And why shouldn’t one WWII Axis-aligned state stick up for another (Albania) against the European state that fought back against the Nazis?

The EU rule-of-law mission, EULEX, has condemned comments made by a Kosovar judge, revealing the private deliberations during the [trial] of three former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA.

Judge Rrahman Retkoceri was part of a three-man panel, including two EULEX representatives, which [handed] down jail terms to Latif Gashi, Nazif Mehmeti and Rrustem Mustafa for war crimes committed during the conflict in Kosovo.

But speaking to Pristina dailies Epoka e Re and Lajm following the decision, he revealed he was against convicting the men but had been outvoted by his international colleagues.

According to the newspapers, he claimed the decision was ‘unjust and unlawful’.

The trio, known as the Llapi Group, were found guilty of torture and the inhumane treatment of prisoners at camps in the hills of northern Kosovo, near Podujevë/Podujevo.

Senior Kosovar politicians have lined up since the sentencing to condemn the verdict.

In a statement, Christophe Lamfalussy, EULEX’s head of press, claimed that this case demonstrated that Kosovo’s judiciary ‘does not appear to have sufficient protection from outside interference’.

He said: “EULEX would like to stress that, according to the Kosovo law, the opinions expressed and the positions taken by judges during their internal discussions in reaching a verdict are confidential.

“This is a fundamental rule which guarantees the independence and the impartiality of the judges whose decisions are taken in accordance with the applicable law and on the basis of the evidence gathered.

“Following a sensitive trial, a Kosovo judge did not abide by this rule. He made a public statement about the confidential deliberations he had had…with two EULEX colleagues.

“Now it is up to the competent Kosovo authorities to look into this event which raises two major issues.”

Lamfalussy called on institutions – especially the Kosovo Judicial Council – to ‘strengthen their commitment to ensuring that prosecutors and judges may work in an environment free from any kind of threats, pressure or promises’.

He added: “Kosovo judges work in a difficult environment where threats are made and pressure exerted.
…
Mustafa, known as Remi, was a senior commander in the former KLA and is now an MP for the ruling Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, and chairperson of the Interior Affairs and National Security Committee in parliament. [Yes, in Kosovo the terrorists run security. Another staple of Kosovo: the war criminals get to pursue political careers like nothing ever happened.]

According to information released by the EU rule of law mission, the three men were found to have been behind the beating and torture of Kosovo Albanian civilians held in the detention centre, in an attempt to force confessions of disloyalty to the KLA.

Mehmeti and Mustafa were found guilty of the beating and torture of a Serbian forest ranger, who they imprisoned at detention centres in Bare, Bajgora and other surrounding locations in an attempt to force him to confess to acts against the KLA and to provide intelligence.

Gashi was sentenced to six years in prison, Mehmeti three and Mustafa four years. All three have appealed.

The case was first investigated in 2001 to 2002 and went to trial in 2003 [by a UN court], concluding with guilty verdicts and long jail sentences. However, in 2005, the Supreme Court of Kosovo ordered a retrial.

The sentences on Friday led to a flurry of condemnation from senior political leaders.

Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said: “This is bad news for Kosovo. The Kosovo Government reiterates the world-known truth that the war of KLA was a liberation war, a just war - supported by all the citizens of Kosovo. Kosovo Government will continue with its commitment for the rule of law and unbiased justice.”

Ramush Haradinaj, leader of the opposition party AAK, Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, said: “This is to be regretted, because the announcement of the verdict is in complete discrepancy with the truth and the values of the KLA war.”

These comments, in turn, forced EULEX to release a statement underlining that the verdict was based on the principles of an independent judiciary.

The statement read: “EULEX supports and shares the Kosovo Government’s engagement and dedication to the rule of law and unbiased justice. This commitment is crucial to ensuring that Kosovo’s judiciary meets European standards.”

So what we have is a Kosovo “Supreme Court” that re-opened a case against Albanian war criminals, known as “heroes” to Albanians, in order to get them out of jail. Because committing war crimes in furtherance of the expansionist, supremacist Albanian agenda is no crime at all. A notion that is supported by the ruling party, as it is by the “opposition” party. Both of which are composed of the same kinds of former KLA terrorists who were sentenced here.

These hapless international judges are running into a snag as they try to bring law and order to a society whose leadership is composed of terrorists. U.S.-supported terrorists. The judges have basically been dropped into the middle of a society used to impunity and U.S.-mandated immunity for the terror they’ve used to run it for the past 11 years. So that even the paltry three to six years these terrorists/politicians were sentenced to is too much jail time for killing and torture, if committed by an Albanian.

So naturally the Albanian “judge” would find the verdicts “unjust and unlawful.” Because in Kosovo there is nothing more lawful than killing Serbs, or the equally expendable Albanians who are suspected of disloyalty to the cause of killing Serbs. And if removing fingernails or limbs or whatever kind of torture these politicians/terrorists employed was done in furtherance of the Albanian cause, then removing body parts is a righteous activity.

This is the sort of government that the U.S. has been fighting to be internationally recognized as a legitimate state, and to have a seat at the table of every international institution. Such is the state of U.S. state-building today.

One certainly has to feel sorry for the international judges walking into an environment in which for the past 10 years criminal cases were tossed into a closet at UN headquarters. But the silver lining to all this is that as the judges are confronted with the horror that is Kosovo, it can lead to the real Kosovo finally, finally being exposed. Unlike NATO, whose troops have been witnessing all along what goes on in Kosovo, these judges aren’t constrained by any central command, any gag order, or any blackmail that was making the international military presence keep a lid on the story.

So far, they’ve only beenvandalized for their diligence. While Hague judges and UN personnel have been threatened. As have been any local Albanian judges whose appointments were not approved by the terrorist leadership.

In fact, that appears to be the case with the Albanian judge above, who unlawfully revealed the panel’s deliberations (assuming he’s telling the truth): “…Ratkoceri said he revealed his vote against the ruling because he received threats after the court chamber…voted to convict the three former KLA members accused of torturing civilians.”

As to why he voted to acquit the murderers, one can assume either that he knew his life would be in jeopardy otherwise, or that he was simply being an Albanian. Of course, if the former were the case, he could simply say so, rather than saying that he considers the verdict to be “unjust and unlawful.”

In any case, he was appropriately suspended and then fired for disclosing his vote:

Kosovo’s justice watchdog suspended an ethnic Albanian judge on Friday for saying he voted against the verdict that found three former ethnic Albanian rebels guilty of war crimes in Kosovo’s 1998-99 war…The EU is in charge of prosecuting war crimes in Kosovo because local courts have been reluctant to prosecute former guerrillas, who are seen as liberators by most ethnic Albanians.
…
Mustafa branded the ruling unjust and blamed the EU-run court for bias.

Kosovo’s government, which is led by the former rebel leader Hashim Thaci, called the verdict “bad news for Kosovo.” […]

So here again, from these last two comments, we know just how much the EULEX mission is welcome by Kosovo leaders to show the fledgling “state” the way of lawfulness and justice. If you don’t promote Albanian supremacy, and you stray from the Albanian agenda by an inch, you are demonstrating “bias.”

PRISTINA, Kosovo — The Anti-Corruption Agency (AKK) says the judicial system is the most corrupt institution in Kosovo, followed by the central government, local authorities, and publicly owned companies. Speaking to Deutsche Welle on Sunday (September 20th), AKK head Hasan Preteni said the fight against corruption is an uphill battle. Since 2006, the AKK has sent files on suspected cases to the Public Prosecutor, but no legal procedure has been initiated, Preteni said. “The agency has sent more than 150 files on possible corruption cases, but no official has been arrested,” he added. As a result, most of the cases have been sent to EULEX for investigation. (Deutsche Welle, Telegrafi, Kohavision - 20/09/09)

Below we have an American judge from Minnesota, named Marilyn Kaman, who tried her hand at justice in Kosovo:

…I was posted to a city called Peć/Peja. Or is it Peja/Peć? These are two names, one Serbian and one Albanian, and the order in which you say them supposedly signifies a bias or preference.

It would be difficult being an impartial international judge in Kosovo, where every move was scrutinized.
…
I took part in “internationalized justice”: in contrast with ad hoc bodies such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, we international judges sat in Kosovo’s domestic courts alongside local judges, in the hope of bringing a measure of impartiality to the outcome.

The stories of two women tell much about my experience in Kosovo.

Almost immediately upon arrival in Pec/Peja, I came to know the 1st woman, Haxjere Sahiti.

She had been married on Sunday and murdered on Monday. The 20-year-old Kosovar Albanian woman died from seven gunshots, in her family’s living room. The killer was her brother; the murder was witnessed by her mother and brother.

Her crime was supposedly not being a virgin. Under traditional Albanian cultural code, a bride may be returned to her family if she “is not as she should be” on her wedding night – or the groom may kill her, with a bullet traditionally given him by the bride’s father.

Upon exhumation of Haxjere’s body, it was determined that she had been a virgin, after all.

The international police, with whom I worked, investigated this crime and tried to find the killer. But no one wanted to give information. To talk to police or the courts would violate notions of maintaining family “honor.” To do so would mean that the potential witness (or their family) would “pay” – with their lives – for the information given. Haxjere’s family professed to know nothing.

As an international judge in Kosovo, I was asked to sit on politically sensitive cases – of war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnically motivated disputes, trafficking in drugs and human beings, genocide. I also acted as an investigative judge – more akin to a prosecutor in the United States – and determined whether sufficient evidence existed to charge someone with a crime. I faced many unconventional obstacles that necessarily exist in a mission environment. With Haxjere Sahiti’s case, I confronted an obstacle new to me – that cultural norms dictate both what a “permissible honor killing” is and the silencing of witnesses.

Sabahate was 35 years old. She was not married and had no children, and had completed the Aviation School in Sarajevo. During the 1999 war in Kosovo, she had been a member of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Under UNMIK, the United Nations’ Mission in Kosovo, Sabahate was a Kosovo Police Service officer in Peja, investigating high-profile murders and referring the investigations to international judges like me. Sabahate and I had numerous conversations and we felt a particular kinship with one another.

One day I asked about her safety. You see, I had bodyguards, and she did not. Sabahate just shrugged and said: ‘This is what I do. I enjoy it. And it is the right thing to do. So, I do not worry.’

On November 24, 2003, at 7:45 in the morning, a “drive-by” assassination took place. Sabahate and another officer were killed; the third survived his wounds. After nearly four years of investigations and court hearings – justice comes slowly – the convictions were read out in Peja District Court. Bedri Krasniqi was sentenced to twenty-seven years for double murder; the other accused were acquitted for insufficient evidence.

Sabahate was killed only a couple of months after I returned home. My sadness over her death is still present.

An all-too-familiar postscript: Double murderer escapes Kosovo prison, wire services reported on December 1, 2008, adding, “nine member[s] of the correctional services were held on suspicion that they helped” Sabahate’s killer get away. […]

About the Minnesota judge’s murdered ex-KLA friend Sabahate: Certainly no Albanian, much less an American, would see the big picture of this murder. The big picture: This is the society that Sabahate was fighting as a KLA member to create. So one ex-KLA gets killed by another ex-KLA, the guy who killed her probably fought alongside her in the KLA which Krasniqi most likely was. (And which would help explain the connections he’d have to have to get broken out of prison with so much help.)

It’s doubtful that even girls killed by their families in honor killings would make any connection between the pan-Albanianism that they all promoted, and the honor killings that take their lives. Even the gay Albanians who get beaten up in Kosovo no doubt felt unity against “the Serbian enemy,” and supported enshrining the very kind of lawless society that discriminates against them. Purely out of Albanianism. As if such a society is anything to be proud of.

Indeed, even Tony Dovolani of “Dancing with the Stars,” who should have practice in outside-the-clan thinking by now, nonetheless struts his Albanian nationalism (as do actors Elija Dushku and James Belushi), in the form of costumes donning the ominous double eagle that is the pride of pan-Albania and a symbol of death to anyone daring to speak a Slavic tongue in Kosovo. (As it is for many Albanians who were content to live with non-Albanians in their midst.) “Made in Kosovo,” read a T-shirt that Dovolani wore on the show two weeks ago. Again: As if that’s something to be proud of, rather than something to overcome.

Beyond Kosovo’s unfixable justice system, can you believe it — the free press is also under attack in the celebrated stillborn state:

…Television Journalist Jeton Llapashtica claims to have lost his job because of the questions he asked. Not because his line of inquiry was irrelevant, or his delivery poor, but because he directed “very tough questions” at Kosovo’s government spokesperson, Memli Krasniqi. [Note: Krasniqi is a common last name, and there isn’t necessarily a relation to the aforementioned killer Bedri Krasniqi, outside of possible clan kinship.]

Llapashtica alleges he was fired from his Besa TV job purely because his questions were not in the best commercial interest of the television station he was working for. [Note that the TV station is named for the Albanian blood code, Besa.]

During his interview with Krasniqi, Llapashtica asked the Government’s spokesperson to comment on Kosovar rock band Troja and their song Clown’s testament, in which the political apparatus in Kosovo is criticised as an organized team which is stealing land.
…
Llapashtica said he was told: “You shouldn’t have asked him that question because you provoked him very much. We shouldn’t taunt the government people. They give us advertisements.”

…[Besa TV director Muhamer Fusha] added that “being critical, and a local TV station, is not in the best interest of local TV station”. He said it was [for] the national media to tackle the bigger issues.

While compiling a report in Skenderaj Municipality, which is led by the PDK, Kosovo Democratic Party, a BIRN team was attacked and impeded from filming. Journalist for Jeta në Kosovë Jeta Abazi was trying to report on failures by the mayor.

“Instead of leaving Skenderaj with certain emotions, knowing that the region is famous for resistance toward the Serbian regime, we returned with other emotions and with police escort,” Abazi told viewers after the incident.

According to Glauk Konjufca, from the Vetevendosje! Movement, there is no freedom of expression in Kosovo. “There is an entire mechanism of small scale blackmails, threats, phone calls and pressure threatening the freedom of speech either on behalf of the government or the institutions”.
…
And, according to the US Department of State in 2008: “Journalists in Kosovo are intimidated by the government officials, public service workers, as well as by businesses…”
…
The issues around freedom of press were thrust into the open when, at the end of May, Kosovo’s Parliamentary Speaker Jakup Krasniqi declared that civil society and the media in Kosovo were directed by the Government.
….
Ilir Deda, from KIPRED, said that there was a lack of freedom of speech in Kosovo. “We don’t have a tradition of freedom of expression, and due to the lack of this tradition, the only freedom of expression historically was to say ‘Kosovo republic’ or ‘separation from Serbia’.”

Notice that under Serbia they were free to engage in that kind of speech. So how does “liberation” feel?

What the journalists are experiencing is part and parcel of the rampant criminality and terror-ruled lawlessness that the Serbian authorities finally and reluctantly started to battle in the 1998-99 war. Every media outlet in Kosovo gave of itself to the pro-war, anti-Serbian propaganda effort that won them an intervention to deliver them into the jaws and joys of an Albanian-ruled society. The media knew which side they were on then, so what’s the problem now? Now that they’ve achieved their goal and enshrined such a society into statehood?

And here, also from June, we have an Albanian reporter looking into KLA crimes being tarred as — what else? — a Serbian spy:

The EU’s External Relations Committee office in Pristina, RELEX Kosovo, vows support for freedom of speech as the campaign against journalist Jeta Xharra intensifies…Xharra is the host of a popular current affairs program, “Life in Kosovo”, produced by BIRN [Balkan Investigative Reporting Network] and aired weekly by public broadcaster RTK.

The show has frequently come under attack for its investigation of issues such as alleged atrocities committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, among other issues. In the past days, Xharra has been the victim of an intensifying campaign due to the 31 May airing of a programme looking into freedom of speech in Kosovo. The Infopress tabloid newspaper, beholden to the government for advertising revenues, has labeled her a “spy for Serbia” and published threatening letters from readers. […]

Just your run-of-the-mill reader mail in Kosovo, chosen by the responsible editorial staff of that paper.

The Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK) accused Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and his government of threatening media freedom and freedom of speech on Monday (September 28th). AAK lawmaker Donika Kada-Bujupi compared the current government to the communist regime. According to her, the government’s interventions are risking democracy and undermining progress achieved over the past decade. […]

Progress? The progress of which she speaks has nothing to do with democratizing; what she refers to is the 10-year march to an independent thugocracy. Which she now has. So again, what’s the problem?

As for the mentality that started this post — namely, that whatever is done in the name of the Albanian cause is righteous and therefore a verdict against an Albanian war criminal is “unjust” — it is interesting to note that even Bosnian Muslim war criminals have been known to apologize to their Serbian victims. Meaning that even Bosnian Muslims are less automated than the supposedly even less Muslimy Albanians.

But every now and then, you encounter an Albanian with a death wish — one who, again, doesn’t get the big picture of what he fought for, and makes the mistake of scraping up some fair-thinking in his otherwise automated android head. Rather than admit nothing and keep punching until the six Albanian-populated nations are united as one, the Albanians below — including several ex-KLA — have experienced a short-circuit in their programming and say that since their side won the war, it’s only right to start talking about the KLA’s war crimes and come to terms with what was done in the name of an independent Kosovo. In interviews last April, they exposed the remnants of the humanity god vested them with, before it was corrupted by the religion of “Albanianism”:

The man spoke plainly as he explained the horrors he lived through in a Kosovo Liberation Army prison camp 10 years ago. He told me about how he watched people beaten with steel pipes, cut with knives, left for days without food, and shot and killed.

“What can you feel when you see those things?” he said. “It’s something that is stuck in my mind for the rest of my life. You cannot do those things to people, not even to animals.”

As the man talked, his mother paced nervously in the nearby kitchen. She was panicked and tears were streaming down her face.

“They’ll kill him, they’ll kill him,” she moaned, clutching one of her grandchildren.

But her son persisted. We spent hours in the family’s sitting room as our source detailed allegations of possible war crimes by KLA officers in a military camp in the Albanian border town of Kukes.

It was a crucial interview for a delicate story I have been investigating for years.

Soon after the war ended in Kosovo, I started looking into the thousands of civilians who disappeared during and after the conflict. Many Albanian victims were dumped in wells or transported to mass graves as far away as Belgrade.

But others - mainly Serbs - simply vanished without a trace. There were no demands for ransom, no news of any kind.

I had met sources who spoke vaguely about secret camps in Albania where Kosovo Serbs, Albanians and Roma were interrogated, tortured and in most cases killed.

I met another source who agreed to share important details about KLA prison camps. This man cut a very different profile.

He had returned from a successful career abroad to join the KLA in its fight for Kosovo’s independence from Serbia.

The man was still proud of the goals he fought for, but he had become haunted by the treatment of civilians he had seen at a KLA prison camp. More than that, he said he felt angry and betrayed by KLA commanders who tolerated and even ordered the abuses.

“It didn’t seem strange at the time,” he told me as he described seeing desperate civilians locked in a filthy agricultural shed.

He said the civilians were Serbs and Roma seized by KLA soldiers and were being hidden away from Nato troops. The source believes the captives were sent across the border to Albania and killed.

“Now, looking back, I know that some of the things that were done to innocent civilians were wrong. But the people who did these things act as if nothing happened, and continue to hurt their own people, Albanians.”

This man was one of eight former KLA fighters who revealed some of their darkest secrets from the war.

Yet another source spoke of driving trucks packed with shackled prisoners - mainly Serbian civilians from Kosovo - to secret locations in Albania where they were eventually killed.

He recalled hearing two of the captives begging to be shot rather than tortured and “cut into pieces”.

“I was sick. I was just waiting for it to end,” the source told me. “It was hard. I thought we were fighting a war [of liberation] but this was something completely different.”

It has taken these men 10 years to speak to an outsider about the dark side of the war. They were breaking a code of silence that has held strong in Kosovo.

Very few Kosovo Albanians have publicly revealed crimes committed by their own side. And for good reason. Witnesses who have agreed to provide testimony for prosecutions of KLA commanders have faced intimidation and death threats.

Some have been killed, according to United Nations officials in Kosovo.

There is another reason. All the men we spoke with insisted they were Kosovan patriots and would take up arms again to defend the country’s independence.

But that is precisely the point: independence - of a sort - arrived for Kosovo last year. Their wartime goal has been attained.

As one of the former KLA fighters told me: “Now is the time to be honest to ourselves and build a real state.”

It appears these former KLA soldiers need a reminder of the KLA Oath they took: “I, the Kosovo Liberation Army fighter, in the name of the people and the future, take a solemn oath to be faithful to the liberation battle, firm to the end, and ready to give my life, in every moment for the liberation of Kosovo and all the occupied territories until they are finally united with Albania.” (Video shot in 1998, near Djakovica.)

That a unified Greater Albania was the end game is something the Serbs were screaming from the rooftops in the 90s when we decided to enter the Albanian turf war against them, and the Albanians weren’t exactly keeping it a secret. In fact, they put it in writing years before the war started in their communiques.

Our leaders just knew we wouldn’t be interested. And we’re still not.

Overall, this “Newborn” is a charming demon child, and it’s always calming to see comprehending discussions like this one that took place in June:

June 17 - The Republic of Kosovo has been a sovereign and independent state [sic] for well more than a year. Over the past year, it has moved quickly to build democratic institutions and implement the principles of U.N. special envoy and Nobel laureate Martti Ahtisaari’s plan, including strong constitutional protections for minority rights and for religious and cultural heritage. Sixty countries from every continent have recognized Kosovo, including an overwhelming majority of EU, NATO and OSCE members. The intensive global cooperation shown by nations in building Kosovo could serve as an example for other conflict-resolution efforts, including work for the creation of a future Palestinian state.

On June 26, senior U.S. State Department official Stuart Jones will take your questions on all topics related to Kosovo.

So not only was the method of wresting Kosovo from Serbia cited as a good idea for Israel/Palestine as well, but now the resulting devil child of a “state” is being suggested as a model.

Well, at least the Palestinians already have the “Zionist spy” part down as a label for any critics of a Palestinian regime, so it’s all a very promising parallel.

Re-reading a 2007 Der Spiegel article recently, I came across some information about the brother of indicted war criminal and U.S. buddy Ramush Haradinaj. Daut Haradinaj was speaking at an event honoring a dead Albanian poet-nationalist after serving a prison sentence for manslaughter.

According to the article, many saw his appearance at the ceremony “as a sign of his willingness to fill the breach if his brother Ramush is sentenced at his upcoming trial in The Hague.”

Haradinaj picked up his political career where he left off, with the blessing of the U.S. and UNMIK (UN Mission in Kosovo), and so Daut didn’t need to step in, but at least we know our pal Ramush has an equally competent and murderous brother who would have been encouraged to pursue politics had things turned out differently. Indeed, according to the article, the Haradinaj clan has more than just two such winners:

According to the indictment, Ramush Haradinaj, a.k.a. “Smajl”, was accused of 37 counts of crimes against humanity, including murder, kidnapping and torture, during the Kosovo war in 1998.

The indictment also stated that his brothers, Daut, Frasher and Shkelzen, were among the members of the “criminal organization” headed by Haradinaj, and that the family home in Glodjane was periodically used as a command center to plan and commit the crimes. Thirty-two corpses of Serbs, gypsies and Albanians, some severely mutilated, were found near the farm. So far Haradinaj has denied all accusations.

Sören Jessen-Petersen, the former UN administrator, long viewed the presumed war criminal as a “close partner and friend” who “sacrificed and contributed so much to a better future for Kosovo.”

By 2005, that Haradinaj homestead lined with mutilated bodies served as “a banquet hall where [high-ranking UN and NATO representatives] could meet with Haradinaj to discuss bringing peace to the region.”

I’ll get back to Daut Haradinaj in a moment, but just to complete the picture about this great friend of the U.S., Ramush Haradinaj:

A report by the UN police force in Kosovo has linked Haradinaj to the cocaine trade. And according to a 2005 analysis by Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Haradinaj and his associates play a key role in “a broad spectrum of criminal, political and military activities that significantly affect the security situation throughout Kosovo. The group, which counts about 100 members, is involved in drug and weapons smuggling, as well as illegal trading in dutiable items.”

If the BND analysis is correct, Haradinaj has apparently made himself a major player in one of Kosovo’s key industries. According to experts, the €700 million budget of this province, 90 percent of which is populated by ethnic Albanians, pales in comparison to the revenues earned in the drug trade in Kosovo.

As if this weren’t messy enough as regards Ramush, who is welcomed to our shores by our leaders with open arms, let’s go back to that ceremony at which Daut spoke:

When the event ends [Daut] Haradinaj jumps into a waiting car in front of the center and is taken to a secret restaurant. At the restaurant, Besiana-F, he meets Ali Ahmeti, the leader of the 2001 Albanian uprising in Macedonia. Ahmeti and his equally famous uncle, Fazli Veliu — both of whom are on a US terrorism watch list and have been banned from entering the United States since May 2003 — have crossed the border into Kosovo to join in the day’s celebration. [There is no longer any effective border between Kosovo and Macedonia.]

Upon leaving the restaurant Ahmeti and Haradinaj embrace briefly. Then they climb into SUVs with darkened windows.

So what we have is our good friends the Haradinaj Family naturally being in close ties with folks who are on our terrorism watch list. While Ahmeti and Veliu aren’t doing anything in Macedonia that the Haradinaj clan didn’t do in Kosovo — indeed, Ahmeti is the leader of a governing political party in Macedonia — the former two randomly ended up as “terrorists” just as Haradinaj randomly ended up as a “peace partner.”

The difference between them? Once the Albanians expanded their war into Macedonia, we figured out what their game was, and while the Albanians knew that Kosovo was just one leg of the war for Greater Albania, we had only signed on for Kosovo. Realizing our mistake but unable to undo it, we’ve been keeping up the charade and continuing to term the Kosovo-Albanian terrorists our “allies,” while trying to figure out how to discourage their allies in Macedonia.

Over time, we’ve been given a better “understanding” of our agenda in the region, and therefore eventually startedfacilitating Albanian terror in Macedonia. After all, if we want to keep the Haradinajs as “friends” in Kosovo, eventually we’re going to have to make friends with their friends in Macedonia. Otherwise, try navigating around this one: “Throughout the fighting,” Chris Deliso writes in his book The Coming Balkan Caliphate, “jihadis were also penetrating Macedonia from the other, western front in Tetovo and reportedly had connections with Kosovo Albanian officials such as Daut Haradinaj, chief of general staff of the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC)…according to other Macedonian military sources.”

Turns out, our pal Ramush’s own brother is on our blacklist as well. He reportedly met in August 2001 — just two months after we rescued 400 Albanian terrorists from Macedonian security forces — with Ayman al-Zawahiri’s brother Muhammad. According to the Serbian daily Blic, a “number of intelligence services know about this. There is proof that Daut Haradinaj took part in the clashes with Macedonian security services, because of which he was put on the U.S. terrorist blacklist and thrown out of the Kosovo Protection Corps.”

This reminds us that Albanians walk their own tightrope, in their equally contradictory dealings with us. They are constantly torn between — and always playing — their two key allies, which are each other’s mortal enemies: Washington/London/Brussels vs. the Saudis and bin Laden himself (who helped train and arm the KLA while we did the same).

How to serve and shower love on both, without offending the other? That is the Albanian dilemma.

Of course, even if the Albanians paraded their al-Qaeda connections, would anyone in the mainstream establishment — the same one that repeated their lies and came up with their own to justify the “liberation” and “independence” — actually call them on it? Somehow I doubt it.

To further illustrate the randomness of which Albanians we term “allies” and which ones “terrorists,” let’s take the last name Thaci. If it’s Thaci of Kosovo, it gets a warm welcome in the U.S., since it’s probably our friend, “prime minister” Hashim Thaci. However, if it’s Thaci from Macedonia, it’s probably Mendux (or Menduh) Thaci, the leader of the main opposition Albanian party but for some reason on the U.S. blacklist.

Yet our friend Ramush Haradinaj just had a lovely meeting last month with our blacklisted Thaci, in Tetovo, Macedonia.

Thaci’s name also came up recently because he went on TV in Albania, on a station appropriately titled “Klan,” expecting to be coddled in the country that was the genesis of the Greater Albania plan. Instead, he found that Albania’s Albanians had wised up about…Albanians.

Albanian intellectuals attacked the leader of Macedonia’s DPA party in last night’s political debate on Tirana’s popular TV channel Klan.

While speaking about the Encyclopedia, Thaci unexpectedly received a major slap for thebehaviorof Albanians and ethnic Albanian parties in Macedonia.

This is referring to the first Macedonian encyclopedia, which just came out but is already being revised, with the entire board of editors already fired, because it accurately depicts the 2001 Albanian insurgency against the state. It also says that Albanians came to Macedonia in the 16th century, when everyone knows that Albanians were always everywhere before anyone else was. (Uncannily similar to Muslim claims all over the world.)

“Hatred towards their own country, extreme Islamism, extremely low culture”. These were the quali[ties] which several Albanian intellectuals used in attacking Thaci, who had come to expect certain political benefits by the Albanian media during his visit.

Thaci’s assessment that the Encyclopedia was a political provocation by the Macedonian Government was met with dismay by the participants in the debate, who sharply attacked Thaci and the Albanians in Macedonia as “ungrateful towards the state in which they live”.

This is a strikingly rare and honest statement coming from an Albanian, whose intellectuals don’t often distinguish themselves from the mob mentality of pan-Albanianism that governs the Albanian outlook. It is also the first recognition I’ve heard by an Albanian of Albanian ingratitude, to put mildly the quality of a people whodemandpensions for the insurgencies they wage against their host states. What we also have here is an Albanian pointing to what our own leaders, along with most Albanians, continue to deny and dismiss: rising Islamism among Albanians.

“Macedonia is the only state in the Balkans where there is internal denial. Albanians always deny the state, even [fight] against it. You made war in the middle of Europe and took up arms against your own country. To this day you ambush Macedonian policemen,” said Maks Velo, Albanian writer-critic.

Actually, Macedonia is not the only state in which Albanians deny its legitimacy. Serbia was such a state, and the Albanians in Kosovo — with the help of Albanians in Albania — also “made war in the middle of Europe and took up arms against your own country. To this day, you ambush [Serbian] policemen.”

According to Mr Velo, there is a frightening, extreme Islamism among the Albanian parties in Macedonia and it is not a coincidence that DPA’s leader Mendux Thaci is on the U.S. blacklist for years.

“The mosques in the villages in Macedonia seem like Iranian missiles. If the Albanians there can not climb to a higher cultural level of social life, not to discriminate against women, to build civil society, you will never be able to go up against the Macedonians in any way, especially not intellectually. With minarets you are not going in Europe. We must achieve greater cultural and economic level,” said Velo to Thaci who clearly wished he wasn’t there.

Fatos Lubonja, [another] critic…[said,] “When will we learn our lesson that divisions do not lead anywhere, but only to war and discontent?…So I think it is good for you to identify yoursellf as Macedonian. To live in Yugoslavia and then in Macedonia and to speak and work against the state in which you live, it is a cultural disadvantage, it is wrong.
…
DPA’s leader Thaci appeared flabbergasted wearing a sour smile on his face. He had hoped to gain political points by visiting Tirana. On his last visit to the Albanian capital, Mr. Thaci had lobbied Albanian politicians to be against Macedonia’s admission to NATO.

What we have, finally, are Albanians weighing what is right and what is wrong, as opposed to just what is Albanian. Imagine how wrong things had to go in order for the wrongness to become manifest even to Albanians. It is a wrongness that’s gotten as far as it has thanks to the indulgence of Albanian wrongness by U.S.-led Western powers. Recall this from Chris Deliso:

Macedonia took in over 400,000 Kosovo Albanian refugees. However, when the country was no longer needed for Clinton’s military adventures, it was forgotten, and the long-term consequences of Kosovo — an emboldened pan-Albanian Balkan insurgency — were ignored…[America] began secretly supporting the NLA [(Albanian) National Liberation Army] from its Kosovo base, Camp Bondsteel, through logistical and communications support as well as secret arms airdrops to Albanian-held mountain villages in northwestern Macedonia.
…
For Macedonians, the nadir was reached in June [2001, post-Clinton], during a three-day battle at the Skopje-area village of Aracinovo, where NATO ordered the Macedonian Army to stop its operations and then spirited the heavily armed Albanian fighters off to freedom…[T]he public was shocked when it was reported that Islamic fighters and 17 American military contractors from the Virginia-based Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI) had been found amongst the NLA’s ranks…From that moment, the humiliated and disappointed Macedonian public’s worst suspicions seemed to have been confirmed: America and NATO were in full favor of the Albanian guerrillas.

In other words, the U.S. and NATO have managed to out-Albanize the Albanians.

Indeed, rather than teaching Albanians the ways of the civilized world and multi-ethnicity — as is our “mission” in Kosovo — we’ve been coming around to their way of looking at things. Just check out this job advisory at Camp Bondsteel:

Just visit Camp Bondsteel and ask someone. But you should know that for most jobs available to locals you will need to be fluent in English. You should also be aware that they don’t offer as many jobs to people of Serbian nationality because of the risk of infiltration, so basically this means that if you are Albanian you have a better chance of getting a job.

The most Swiftian part of this is the “risk of infiltration” by Serbs. No worries about infiltration by Islamists or KLA elements, since that is precisely whom Bondsteel serves.

Notice that while rational Albanians like Velo and Lubonja found the Albanian reaction to, and pressure on, the Macedonian encyclopedia shameful, America speaks in one voice with the irrational Albanians:

US and ethnic Albanian officials condemned Macedonia’s first encyclopedia yesterday over its description of an inter-ethnic conflict in 2001 and the history of the country’s Albanian presence.

[Keep in mind that this conflict which, believe it or not, blindsided us — had us threatening armed conflict that year against the over-reaching Albanians. But again, we eventually came around to their way of looking at things, lent some weapons and manpower, and now are offended at Macedonia’s accurate description of that conflict.]

Macedonia was on the brink of a civil war in 2001 when the ethnic Albanian rebel movement, the National Liberation Army (NLA), fought Macedonian security forces for seven months.

The encyclopedia, published by the Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts, says the NLA was an “armed formation trained in camps in Albania and Kosovo by American and British officers and paratroopers.” An official at the US Embassy in Skopje, who asked not to be named, dismissed the claims as ridiculous.

“Allegations that American officers trained the former NLA soldiers are baseless and outrageous,” the official said. “We are disappointed that this institution would put its name on such a ridiculous claim,” the official added. […]

Albanians in Kosovo, meanwhile, burned the Macedonian flag, and the prime minister in neighboring Albania, Sali Berisha, called the encyclopedia unacceptable and urged Macedonian officials to change it.

Indeed, developments such as the following should have rational Albanians like Velo and Lubonja very worried, since it’s probable that rather than a Greater Albania, what Albania and Macedonia are becoming part of will have all the lawlessness and irrationality of a Greater Kosovo:

Pristina - Albanians in Albania and Kosovo are a single nation, Prime Minister Sali Berisha asserted Tuesday at the start of a two-day visit aimed at forging closer ties with the former Serbian province.

‘The nation is one and inseparable in spirit and identity,’ Berisha told reporters after arriving in Kosovo….Berisha, who started his second term in the office last month, is due to sign a series of protocols in Pristina to further ease the flow of people and goods across the border…

Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said ‘it is not a secret’ that Albanians in Kosovo and Albania have ‘brotherly relations,’ adding that they were reflected in the effort to enable free movement across borders.
…
Also, most among the ethnic Albanians who make up the majority in parts of southern Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo aspire to join their compatriots in a single country, which is another source of tension.

Pristina, 6 October (AKI) - Visiting Albanian prime minister Sali Berisha and his Kosovo host Hasim Taci on Tuesday signed several bilateral agreements which will facilitate movement of people and goods between the two countries and promote customs and border police cooperation.
…
On his second visit to Kosovo since the country gained independence from Serbia last year, Berisha said “There are no two Albanian nations and a national ideal of Albanians must be a European ideal”.

Berisha and Taci also signed agreements in regard to the legalisation of status of the people which have illegally settled in the two countries.

After the withdrawal of Serbian forces from Kosovo in 1999, the province was put under United Nations control and many Albanian citizens have since illegally settled in Kosovo. […]

As they were doing for a century prior to the war.

Meanwhile, Washington continues to deny that anything like a Greater Albania is in the works. Like I said, out-Albanizing the Albanians.

Recently, one of the mainstream funny outlets — Saturday Night Live — decided to finally do its job, and deigned to poke some fun at the heretofore untouchable president. On cue, the prominent Yahoo! news blog rushed to the president’s defense.

This is unprecedented, at least to my recollection. Is it even conceivable for a mainstream news outlet, upon hearing any of the infinite and less-than-accurate jabs at George W. Bush, for example, to dutifully get to the bottom of just how accurate that jab was and set the record straight? No indeed. There was only more piling on to be done by news organizations, in supplement to what the jesters and entertainers were doing.

So imagine now, if you can — and in an Obama era you certainly can — that a news outlet is actually arguing, point by point, with a comedy outlet about the president, who traditionally is supposed to be the comedy-target-in-chief. Here is the opening part of the “analysis” that recently took on, for god’s sake, SNL:

…”Saturday Night Live” opened with Fred Armisen as President Obama, delivering an address from the Oval Office. Noting up front that he’d failed to secure the 2016 Olympic Games for Chicago, Armisen’s Obama said it was just further proof that his detractors’ fears are unfounded: How could he transform the country into something resembling the former Soviet Union or Nazi Germany when he’s failed to accomplish anything at all? “When you look at my record,” he said, “it’s very clear what I’ve done so far, and that is nothing.”

But are SNL’s accusations of Obama being a do-nothing president accurate? Let’s run down the list of the nine promises SNL lampooned President Obama for doing “nothing” on to see where he actually stands. […]

In March I did some debunking of the disingenuous tag by U.S. politicians of Kosovo Albanians as “freedom fighters” against a communist Yugoslavia — as an excuse to prop them up against that country as we formulated our designs on that country.

Aside from the fact that at the time, neighboring Soviet-sponsored communist Albania was the most Stalin-like dictatorship in the Soviet bloc (next to the Soviet Union itself) — and aside from the fact that the Kosovo Liberation Army was composed of fascists, Marxists, Maoists, university students and other assorted communists — I stumbled upon this paragraph from a 2007 Der Spiegel article:

While the UN continues to wrestle over Kosovan independence, radical forces in and around Deèani [or ‘Decani,’ in Kosovo] are already a few steps ahead. “We are all Albanians. Enver Hoxha was our president,” protestors chanted last year at a demonstration in front of the city hall to commemorate the former Stalinist Albanian dictator’s 98th birthday. Then they dispatched a congratulatory telegram to Hoxha’s widow in Tirana.
…
Everyone in Deèani [Decani] — including the international administrators — knows that the Hoxha commemorative ceremony was organized by the same KLA veteran leaders who routinely stage protest marches whenever one of the Haradinajs is in trouble or someone wants to intimidate the orthodox monks in the monastery on the outskirts of Deèani.